J. Smith-Cameron has had a great year overall, and finishing her run on Hacks was just the icing on top. She got to have fun and be slightly embarrassed by talking to herself and laughing. She has many thoughts about why Kathy and Deborah will probably never really be able to reconnect. And she’s as much a fan of Hacks as all the viewers.
The Contending: What was it like to film all those different versions of yourself laughing at a naked Deborah Vance?
J. Smith-Cameron: Embarrassing and exhilarating in equal measure, to be honest. So they lit a chair on a little platform. I can’t technically explain this but they took pictures of me with iPhones from all different angles, and Paul [W. Downs] would yell out things for me to do, and I would also just think of things like pretending I was gossiping and sharing a laugh with the other Kathys. It was a unique experience for me, and it felt like here goes nothing, this is going to be ridiculous and embarrassing, but so what? It’s such a funny concept and it ended up being kind of fun.
The Contending: The reverent way that Kathy holds the salt and pepper shakers when she gets them has a seriousness but it is also played up for laughs. Especially the way Ava is talking about them. How did you guys try to find that balance of the seriousness and the humor in that scene?
J. Smith-Cameron: The whole crux of their competitive relationship comes down to petty things they do and the possessiveness of who had the husband’s love, who had the mother’s love, who had success, who didn’t have success. It’s kind of a ridiculous prop, but on the other hand, that’s the kind of sentimental thing you relish having from your grandmother, or your mother, or your father. My father used to have this ceramic shiny black whale on his dresser that you could put a man’s watch in its mouth and stuff inside the back of the whale. And I loved it so much, I wanted to inherit it, but it ended up with my sister. Then I found one exactly like it on Etsy and ordered it, and told my sister that I was doing it so we would each have one. And she was like, I don’t want that! So now I have two black shiny whales. I tried to give one to Kenny, my husband, who was like, I don’t want that. So I have bookends now.
The Contending: Do you think she’ll ever find out that they’re fake?
J. Smith-Cameron: Yes, I kind of think she would find out. In my fantasy I feel like she stumbles across T.L. Gurley’s shop and makes friends with him. And then over time catches on. Because I think their feud has to go on in this petty, silly way ad infinitum.
The Contending: We hear about Kathy a lot through Deborah’s viewpoint, but then when we meet her, she’s trying to reconnect with her sister, and DJ loves her aunt. So we know it’s a complex situation all around. What do you end up thinking about Kathy as a character?
J. Smith-Cameron: When I was simply a fan of the show like everyone else I remember thinking, wouldn’t it be funny if we ever really get to meet her and she’s nice? She’s not threatening. She’s not unfair. She’s just nice. It seemed to me in the first episode that was the joke. Then I got approached by the writers Lucia [Aniello], Paul, and Jen [Statsky] at an Emmys party, and they were like, we want you to play her sister. I was like, ‘oh, ha ha ha!’ I thought they were just being flattering, and I thought that the character’s too mythic. They’re not gonna really write her in the show. Then they did and I remember thinking that they had the same idea, but then it was almost as if the characters craved the conflict. It had to come back around to that.
The Contending: So you don’t think they will ever make up? In fact that seems to be the one relationship that doesn’t get any final moment of understanding.
J. Smith-Cameron: I don’t know if siblings ever make up. It’s sort of biblical, a situation that everyone can relate to to some degree. They are the dearest people in your life, but there are also these resentments that get very built into the layers of your epidermis that are hard to really banish. I think of it like a universal sibling arrangement, which is…kind of yearning to reconnect, but being wary. Them becoming teenagers every time over a silly competitive beef.
The Contending: Coming to the end of the show, what has it been like, the whole journey with the character and the show in general?
J. Smith-Cameron: I had a splendid time. I just loved all those people. It was a great crew, the whole outfit’s just excellent. And I adore Jean Smart. I don’t know what to say. I mean, I did…the most superlatives I could think of. That’s what I would say. I just really had a blast.
I would have loved to have done more, but they had so many good characters to write for. And it all unfolded beautifully, in my opinion. I think they did their show proud by the amount that they had of all the characters.
The Contending: Final thoughts?
J. Smith-Cameron: I feel like I’ve had this really interesting year, because I got to play this really unhinged murderer on Elsbeth this year, and I had a crazy idea for it, and the showrunner and the director of the episode and Carrie all kind of embraced the idea, and we did it. I also got to play a real person in Murdaugh: Death in the Family. That was incredibly gratifying. I loved working with Patricia and Jason, and those boys are so talented who play the brothers. All three of those parts were so different to play, it was kind of a banner year for me. I didn’t get to play Gerry this year, but I got to play his three really cool characters. And then I’ve been working this summer on two different indies that are also really different from each other. Different from anything I’ve done before. That’s what actors love, I mean, most actors do anyway. A chance to do different things in different genres and get different tones of the material. It’s just been a really rich year for me.
Hacks is streaming now on HBO Max.
